In my dream, his eyes plead. His mouth moves, but I cannot hear what he says.
In my dream, I wipe the snow from his brow. I wipe it from his body.
In my dream, I kneel at his side, like a supplicant.
King Street, then Park Street. Ede and I, a bottle of gin in each pocket.
We’ve outgrown this place, we agree. We’re sick of it. We’ve explored the lanes, we’ve walked the courtyards. We’ve seen behind the high walls and the iron doors.
How many times have we drunk ourselves silly in the Maypole? How many times have we scavenged for alcohol after closing time? How many times have we raided the communal kitchens last thing at night? How many times have we pissed in our sinks? How many times have we stepped over vomit? How many times have we done an all-night essay blitz, high on energy drinks and Pro Plus tablets?
We’re bored. Bored of study. Bored of preparing for life. Bored of waiting for life to begin.
ME: There’s one thing for sure — I’m not taking a fucking gap year!
EDE: Fuck gap years! Reality! That’s what we need! We need to know what we’re up against!
The high street. Office workers out for their Christmas parties. Women in round-toed high heels and maxi dresses and ankle bracelets. Men in Fred Perry shirts …
EDE: That’s you next year, Peters — Fred Perry shirt, and a look of damnation …
We imagine my office-job future. Office rivalries. Office flirtations. Conversations about cars. And football. And last night’s TV. Watching the clock. Wandering the corridors. Cold-calling clients on a Saturday morning. Telemarketing on a Sunday night. Pulling all-nighters to impress the boss. Out on the town with people I can’t stand. Saving up for a starter house in an exurb. Hanging myself in the company toilets.
EDE: Not to worry, Peters. It won’t be much better for me …
He’s going to be one of the bad Edes, Ede says. These are probably his last weeks of lucidity. He’s going to go the way of Guthrie. The way of Scroggins. Drunk every night by cocktail hour. Then rehab. Then interventions. Then 360s. Then suicide attempts. Then electroshock treatment. Then, finally, a shotgun to the head.
EDE (at the top of his voice): Fuck this!
ME (louder): FUCK THIS!
Only one more term to go. Only one more. The world is rushing to meet us. The world is crowding our vision. The world is flaming towards us, like a comet. When will it strike? When will it burst across our skies?
Terrible, decisive things are about to happen. Knives are glittering in the darkness. Teeth are glittering in the darkness. The night, the whole night, is opening wide.
We’re so vulnerable! So exposed! We’re drowning in possibility. In potential.
We’re lost in time. Lost to time. We’re abandoned to the wilds of time. Wandering in time’s night …
Last class before the Christmas break. Wittgenstein brings us Lebkuchen and wine.
He talks softly, as he always does. His intent, after all, is so utterly at odds with loudness. But today, his voice drops almost to a whisper.
An old Jewish legend tells that there are nine righteous people alive in the world at any moment, Wittgenstein says — but he likes to imagine there are nine righteous thinkers—thinkers who will know what it means for philosophy to have ended.
Nine righteous thinkers, who will know the burden that has been lifted … Nine last seers, who will feel the relief of the end, who will know themselves to have been unburdened from thinking and from the task of thinking …
Nine last logicians, who will be free to walk out beneath the summer sun … Nine last visionaries, who will emerge, blinking, from their thinking-shacks and thought-burrows … Nine righteous ones, who will open their eyes at last, who will breathe the air to the bottom of their lungs …
Nine righteous philosophers, who will laugh at last — who will really laugh, like children … Nine righteous thinkers, who only now will step into life, into the fullness of life.
A last walk on the Backs. Wittgenstein ahead, in deep discussion with Okulu.
Ede and I, light-headed from the wine …
We imagine the righteous Inuit, a virtuoso of despair, thinking about thinking as she crosses the dark ice on her snowmobile. Soon, the sun will rise for the first time in six months. Soon, the post-philosophical sun will rise. Soon, there will come the post-philosophical dawn …
We imagine the righteous Siberian, eyes bloodshot, ruined by alcohol. Ruined by philosophy. Downing a quart of vodka every morning before breakfast, to be done with his thoughts. Soon, the bottle will fall from his hands. Soon, he will reach a new kind of drunkenness, a new kind of sobriety …
We imagine the righteous sannyasin, a profound cousin of Chakrabarti, having died to the world, having condemned himself to wander until the end of philosophy. Soon, he will arrive at his destination. Soon, he will realise that he has already arrived; that the world, his place of exile, is everywhere his home …
We imagine the righteous mental patient, zoned out on meds. Half awake for years, blurry-headed for years, but knowing that soon, it will be time to throw away her tranquilisers — that soon, it will be time to exit the asylum, and be welcomed in the world as the prodigal sister, the measure of sanity …
We imagine the righteous pair of philosopher-saints, living at the edges of the Egyptian desert. Philosopher-lovers, completing each other’s thoughts, each other’s sentences. Soon, they’ll kiss away philosophy. Soon, very soon, they’ll weep away philosophy …
We imagine the righteous AI, blinking into consciousness, thinking electronic thoughts in Bell Laboratories. And, in a nanosecond, exhausting every philosophical move. Every existential move … Soon, it will sink back into blissful non-consciousness. Soon, it will rejoin the inanimate world …
We imagine the righteous philosopher-dolphin, diving through the waves — wanting only to love diving through the waves, wanting only to love the sun on its back … Soon, it will be reunited with the elements. Soon, it will be no more than a part of the sea, diving through the sea …
We imagine God Himself, Wittgenstein’s God, born of torment as the opposite of torment, born of pain as the opposite of pain, knowing that the time has come to vacate His throne. Soon, divinity will be reborn on earth. Soon, the godhead will show itself in the sky …
Grantchester meadows.
Ede proposes we create a living orrery.
Chakrabarti is the earth. Okulu, the moon, begins an orbit around him. Then Chakrabarti and Okulu begin to orbit Guthrie, the sun.
Doyle/Mercury runs rapidly round Guthrie, and Ede/Venus does the same a little farther out, but both inside Chakrabarti/Earth’s trajectory. I am Mars, running in a wider circle, and Mulberry is the asteroid belt. Alexander Kirwin is Deimos, and Benedict Kirwin, Phobos: Mars’s moons, orbiting me tightly. Titmuss, zigzagging through the grass, stands in for all the outer planets.
A laughing solar system, with laughing planets and laughing moons, and Guthrie in the middle, the great laughing sun. And even Wittgenstein laughs — even his wintry face breaks into laughter.
After philosophy, we will be as children at play, he says. Any seriousness will be put-on seriousness. Any solemnity will be playful solemnity.